Implants
List of Positive Implants Five Percent Error Cost: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has had a significant portion of their brain replaced with computers and digital storage, and it has taken a rather shocking toll on them. They have cast aside the innate randomness of fleshy beings. Rather than rolling 1d100 for their skill rolls, you instead roll 2d50. This means a few things. First, this creates a steady average around 50, but it also makes extremely good or extremely bad rolls far less common. Treat 2 as a super-crit. Boom, Headshot Cost: 6 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Because it’s possible to isolate, and to a degree, manipulate consciousness, your character has decided to insure their own safety and give themselves a safe room for their own mind. They can only be actually killed if they take damage equal to their max health in the critical area where their central data core is stored; that's up to them to decide, many beings have it moved somewhere unusual to protect themselves from attackers that might otherwise just crush their head. If their health drops to 0 and they bleed out otherwise, their body has been ruined and begins decaying but their mind goes into a dream-like stasis while awaiting re-connection. This implant is required if you plan on playing a vessel or AI. One Percent Error Cost: 1 Implant Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has had a significant portion of their brain replaced with computers and digital storage, and they have become shockingly…. Synthetic. They cannot take actions differently beyond very small adjustments; they know their abilities and can't imagine just being able to surpass their own limits. Rather than rolling 1d100 for their skill rolls, you instead roll 5d20. This means a few things. First, this creates a strong average around 50, but it also makes extremely good or extremely bad rolls very rare. In addition, they cannot crit or crit fail, regardless of your roll. Hyper-Reactive Visual Input Reprocessor Cost: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By implanting your character with a computer chip that can do preliminary visual data processing before sending the information to their brain, they can react to things they see much faster in combat. The first time they miss a standard attack in combat on their turn, their turn does not end, but the additive -1 MFD from taking an action still applies, and an additional -1 MFD penalty for having to react to circumstances they did not plan for. If they have a DEX of at least 6, this ability can trigger on two misses per turn, not just one. Sympathy Inducer Cost: 5 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Once per day, your character can activate this implant in a moment in response to a threat, causing it to, through them, release pheromones that alter perceptions of them. For one minute, enemies must first roll Mental Resist MFD 1 to find it within themselves to engage your character, and if they fail they are unable to knowingly injure your character. Those under the influence are aware of something affecting their mind, but how they react is their choice. The affected can reroll every turn until they pass, and once they do so do not need to roll further, as they have surpassed the effects. Videographic Memory Cost: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Sometimes, it’d be really nice if your character could record what they’re looking at for further analysis. By implanting tiny cameras and microphones into your character’s head, recordings can be made of the things around them. The recordings are limited to what would otherwise be visible to a normal person with the way their head is facing being the center, and standard audio frequencies, as well as only about the same level of detail that normal people could see and hear. This results in about 8K video, which fills 50GB of data space per hour. In order to minimize the amount of storage devices in their head, they have a limit of 1TB of total storage, enough for 20 hours. They can easily download their recordings to any computer, and wipe their internal storage whenever they like. Cyberneural Piloting Interface Cost: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character has received both the mental training and the implants necessary to plug in to a control console on board and mind-meld with whatever it is they’re driving or piloting. When using this ability, they can control the entire ship by themselves, gaining the benefits of all positions. This implant only has data processing algorithms for class 1 ships, however; the circuitry will quickly fry and seriously injure the user if too much data is sent through it from a larger ship. Cyberneural Command Interface Cost: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By implanting a much larger chip and allotting significantly more processing power, cyberneural interfaces that once only worked for small ships are now much more useful. This implant is so robust that aligning their cognition with electronics that is now second nature to your character, and they can act faster than several people could otherwise, even working together. However, this task is accomplished by splitting the control tasks into smaller subroutines, each channel doesn’t have enough power for the requirements of small, fast ships, making this implant useless for Class 1. Your character can link themselves directly with whatever it is they’re driving or piloting. When using this ability, they can control the entire vehicle or ship by themselves, gaining the benefits of all positions. This implant is used for class 2 and 3 ships. Fulldive Hacker Chip Cost: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Due to a bit of technology at your disposal, you have found a very different way of breaking into computer systems. Your character can enter any computer as though it were a virtual reality, gaining a +10 to computers and hacking, and potentially allowing them to navigate through entire networks, discovering information that would never otherwise be accessible, but only if the computer is equipped with a standard wired data transfer port that your character can plug in to. If for some reason you are suddenly cut off from the computer system, your character makes a mental resist roll MFD 0.75 to avoid being knocked out for several hours as their mind attempts to reassert itself. If you take the upgraded version of this chip, you gain an additional +5 to Computers, the mental resist MFD changes to 1.5, but more importantly, your character can now wirelessly connect as though they were making a remote entry through a standard comms system, like a compad. Holographic Memory Cost: 5 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Sometimes, it’d be really nice if your character could record what they’re looking at for further analysis, but videos sometimes just don’t cut it. They need 3D. By implanting an array of tiny cameras and microphones into your character’s head, recordings can be made of the things around them. The recordings are limited to what would otherwise be visible to a normal person with the way their head is facing being the center, and standard audio frequencies, as well as only about the same level of detail that normal people could see and hear. This results in about 8K holograms, which fills about 100GB of data space per second. In order to minimize the amount of storage devices in their head, they have a limit of 6TB of total storage, enough for 1 minute. They can easily download your recordings to any computer, and wipe their internal storage whenever they like. Keep in mind, the hologram can only include data within line of sight, so if you need good models of objects, consider circling them if you can, and getting multiple angles. Additional Ocular Lenses Cost: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 3 Description: By adding extra layers of extremely advanced lenses to a character’s eyes, they can be given the ability to see objects that are extremely far away with ease: receiving this implant once allows them to see twice as far as normal people. Taking this implant twice grants them three times normal range, and a third time gives them a visual range nearly five times that of a normal person. Stacking more lenses on just becomes impossible, though, due to stress on the eye itself. But, at that point, if this character stood at the top of a mountain on a very dark night, they could still make out a candle light on the horizon. That’s probably far enough. External Sound Amplifiers Cost: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 3 Description: Your character has, through implants that boost sound waves in intensity before they reach the ear drum, been gifted with ears far more sensitive than most other people. They have an increased ability to tell sounds apart, determine their direction, and understand whispers from a distance most people couldn’t even hear them. They get +1 MFD on PER checks that can use hearing. After taking this implant twice they receive a +5 in all CHA skills as well, and after three times the strength of their ears allows them basic echolocation if they focus, an expanded range of audible frequencies, and the ability to hear things like heartbeats. Tapetum Lucidum Cost: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By strongly enhancing the retroreflective layers of their eyes, your character can now see in complete darkness as though it were a very cloudy day. They might find, however, that bright light is a bit hard to handle, and try to stick more to the shadows. Bullet Trajectory Calculation Matrix Cost: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: A multitool in your character’s hooves is a truly dangerous thing. Range penalties are reduced by one MFD, although this doesn’t expand the max possible range of a weapon, extreme range is still 4x base range. Extreme Attention Rerouter Cost: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Sometimes, you just have to settle down, ignore literally everything going on around you, and get the job done. In exchange for becoming totally unable to react to outside stimuli for the duration, any skill roll related to a non-combat task your character chooses can be immune to crit failures. However, should anything forcefully interrupt them, such as being pulled away from your work, being shot, or a sudden hull breach, their task will be treated as a crit fail, regardless of anything else. Economic Assistance Chip Cost: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: By implanting a computer chip with direct lookups to a database of trade data, your character can now automatically excite the neural pathways used in economic reasoning as soon as they find themselves trying to barter. If they’ve spent at least a galactic day in the port of trade you’re currently at, or in less olden terms, within the general area that they’re trying to trade, such as the whole system if they’re in a sparsely populated area, down to a single shopping center on a city-scape planet, they barter as though the price in question were, baseline, 10% higher or lower, their choice. This means that even when they fail to get a deal, they get a deal. Rapid Attack Chip Cost: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Sometimes, the only thing your character needs in combat is the ability to get more hits in, faster. Thus, with the addition of computerized pre-calculations for their moves in combat, they can do just that. Their standard attack move is 1 MFD harder by default because of the delay for computations, but they can take up to half their DEX rounded down in standard attacks in combat without the MFD getting harder. This only applies if the attacks are consecutive, and at the start of their turn. Integrated Comms System Cost: 1 Implant Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Who carries around comm pads anymore? Most people, but that’s not the point. Your character is beyond such things, and got an implanted comms system so that they could connect to local wireless networks and send messages just like they could with a comm pad. It connects directly to their brain, so they only need to think their commands and the information will be in their head like a memory. Voicebox Modulator Cost: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Modifications to your character’s vocal chords and the addition of some specialty hardware have made it possible for them to change their voice to sound naturally like far wider ranges on beings than they otherwise could. Mimicry is of course a Deception skill, but when combined with other abilities this has far more interesting uses. Sex-Fluid Physiology Chip Cost: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Just being one sex for your whole life is boring, and your character doesn’t wanna visit a doctor every time they feel something different, so they turned to science for help. Leaving out the NSFW details, your character has received an implant that restructures their available biomass, and specifically the gametes in your body, while they sleep. Or, not while they’re sleeping, but the process has been described as ‘deeply unsettling’ to be conscious for. In the span of 8 hours, your character can go from being physically male, to female, or the reverse. Thanks to the implant, while internally their organs might be odd, they are in every way functionally whatever sex they chose, including reproductive abilities, and it remains perfectly stable until they decide to change again. The chip will ‘refuse’ to function, however, if it detects females in an active state of pregnancy. List of Negative Implants Faulty Colour Enhancer Value: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Hundreds of years ago, colour blindness was finally cured forever. Fortunately, thanks to the wonders of modern science, your character can now appreciate the struggles of people from days past, in an extreme, because while most colour blindness was only a pair of colours, they can’t see colour at all. All that being said, no surprise, sometimes, colours get the best of your character. This normally isn’t a problem for them, and fortunately it can even help those afflicted spot irregularities and pick out camouflage in some circumstances. Just don’t forget to mention this shortcoming to your GM when your character has to operate any sort of contraption with color-coded controls. Have fun not being able to tell ships of different colors apart! Kamikaze Chip Value: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character is a little bit nuts in terms of how they fight. They thought it would be a good idea to get an implant that reduces their survival instinct and fear responses in combat, but…. Running at their enemies with armed grenades is not a viable combat strategy! This implant grants characters one free use of the ‘Run’ move in combat without it affecting their MFD’s. This is done by sacrificing defense for speed, however, and lowers their effective DR by 2, as well as conveying a -1 MFD penalty to dodging, parrying, and blocking rolls. Bonus points if they scream aloud while charging headlong into battle. Overactive Discovery Encouragement Chip Value: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Curiosity killed the cat, and it’ll kill people with this implant too if they’re not careful. Your character is curious, dangerously so, thanks to an implant meant to encourage them to see a little more of the world that works a little too well. They can’t resist hitting the big red button. They always want to investigate a little more than they should. They might not be able to resist a locked door or an encrypted message within a computer. When people with this implant come upon something that catches their eye, they’re bound to investigate – for better, or for worse. Competitive Drive Core Value: 1 Implant Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: This implant releases endorphins every time it detects the host engaging in competitive behavior, and what do you know, turns out it’s addictive. To this character everything is a competition. They always want to race the other characters to the battle, put themselves in more danger than anyone else, slosh down the most drinks. They cannot turn down a challenge. Shorting Neural Blocker Value: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Sometimes, your character thinks they go to a better place for a while because this implant is cutting off almost all sensory data from the world around them. Sometimes, they do so in the worst possible situations, and if someone doesn't save them, your character may actually end up there! They might act like they’re in a different place, or do things that are seemingly pointless, like water dead flowers, attempt to bake muffins in an oven that isn’t hooked up, or write invitations to a garden party they claim they’re having next week. At the beginning of the session, roll Mental Resist MFD 1. If they succeed, your character is lucid for the rest of the session, and may act as such. If they only succeed MFD 1.5, then the next time your character is put under stress (combat being a prime example of what we’re defining as “stress”) then they must roll once per round (six seconds) or once per five minute period outside of combat until they either succeed MFD 1 or fail MFD 1.5. If they fail, they will revert to acting as if they are in a better place. They will continue doing so until something happens that their brain cannot justify, such as significant bodily harm, or all sources of stress disappear. Note that they may end up in a better place, as the source of stress hasn’t necessarily disappeared; bullets may still be flying. While in their half-present state, they can't make coherent remarks or meaningfully communicate with other players, but will continue to respond in a cooperative fashion to suggestions or physical attempts to move their person. This implant, it should be noted, can be very difficult to role-play. Failed Auto-Translation Matrix Value: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character thought it might be nice to have their language processing centers externalized so that a computer could translate anything they read for them. Great idea! Unfortunately, it’s broken, and now they’re totally unable to process written language in any wait they can understand. Hopefully someone reads this message to them. Your character may be extraordinarily intelligent, but they’re cursed with not being able to process text visually. This is an absolutely debilitating implant for those who rely on most intellect skills, and prevents them from quite a lot of options in life. Illiterate characters are totally incapable of using the skills of Hacking, Science, and Computers, but more importantly are prevented from reading books or any signs they come across in their travels. They may still be fluent in multiple languages, however, and should they get this implant fixed, they will regain the ability to read. Enhanced Negativity Regulator Value: 1 Implant Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character is simply incapable of looking on anything but the brightest side of life because they decided it would be good to not be so negative all the time, and maybe overdid it a little. This is not a normal characteristic of people who aren’t settled on a nice planet or station, considering that there usually isn’t much to look forward to. Nonetheless, while they might not always be grounded in reality, people with this implant are always looking up. Many people in the galaxy tend to give people with this positive of an outlook a wide berth; insanity is catching. People with this implant tend to mean well, but are frequently misunderstood or taken as foolish. This manifests as a -1 MFD CHA skill penalty against those not living in secure living conditions or those that experience other poor circumstances. Violent Behavior Blocking Chip Value: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Ponies with this implant don’t think it’s right to go around shootin’ folk just for looking like pirates. Or even for being pirates. Or, in some cases, even for shooting at you first! Possibly due to fears in the past of causing harm, this implant forces characters to take “do no harm” to an extreme, and they will try to reason with whoever or whatever is attacking them whenever they believe it is possible. Only when all other options are exhausted will they resort to violence, and even then only in self-defense, or in defense of their friends. Hostages, for example, will not be allowed to come to harm if this character has any say. Single-Minded Learning Accelerator Value: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Characters are sometimes fixated on learning, and to help with that, get implants that make staying focused on learning really easy. The downsides are that they don’t get out much, and as a result are usually shy and don’t make friends easily: much of the knowledge they have of the world is gained from books, or from overhearing conversations held by more gregarious sorts. This over-reliance on books and computers manifests as a -10 to any six skills of the player’s choice, likely areas that never came up in their studies. However, it wasn’t all for naught, they learned a lot about something, and they both gain a new Expert Skill, and one of their Expert Skills becomes a Mastery Skill. The chosen cannot be skills reduced as a result of this implant. Faulty Auto-Assistance Chip Value: 2 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Bad things always seem to happen around your character, or to them. Usually these things only affect them, but sometimes their friends aren’t so lucky. Characters with this implant are very unlucky because a glitch in a piece of installed hardware meant to make life easier periodically fails, essentially throwing their attempts all out of whack. Once per session, the GM may force characters with this implant to reroll any roll, or if the roll is to assist, they can also force the person being assisted to reroll. The worst of the two rolls becomes the final result. Multisoul Vessel Glitch Value: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character is not totally alone inside their own body and mind, a terrible mistake somewhere in becoming what they are has trapped multiple minds inside them. There are two main ways this manifests; the first method is to create a single “main” personality and then create (or have your GM create) at least 3 “satellite” personalities that only emerge under a specific condition or set of conditions. The main personality and satellite personalities may need their own character sheets, as they should have differing mental stats and skills. The satellite personalities may not take any modifications requiring creation points uniquely to themselves, instead those taken are shared across all personalities. They will level up their skills whenever the main character does, gaining the same number of skill points. Satellite personalities cannot possess abilities that the main personality’s body is incapable of performing. The personalities may or may not be capable of interacting with each other, and the level of interaction that they have with each other might vary as the mental state of the pony changes. The second way of handling this is as follows. Your character has a main personality, but it is comprised of multiple facets of other minds. This over-consciousness is aware of the multiple personalities which comprise it—has access to their experiences, inputs, etc. -- and acts as a sort of representative between them and the outside world. This over-consciousness may be the most powerful mind among the facets, or perhaps a conglomeration of the most powerful emotional states of its facets, or it might even be something else entirely. Either way, it has all of the bad experiences of its component minds as well as the good, and it can become overwhelmed in certain situations as a result. Situations that trigger resurgences of memories or emotions from one or more of the component minds may cause hesitation or complete catatonia for a brief period– the GM briefly would tell the player to pause for a second, perhaps lose a combat action, even in a potentially dangerous situation, until something happens to snap the character out of it (like being on the receiving end of a bullet). Larger shocks may take more than a physical stimulus to snap out of. At least three component minds should be fleshed out as characters, and may require their own character sheets and skills as above, though their stats will not usually ever directly influence the dice rolls of this type of character. In both cases, this hindrance must be discussed with your GM before being taken. At least two of the hindered character’s personalities and histories must be developed by the GM, though the player should develop the mind that is dominantly in control. Enthusiasm Inhibitor Value: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: A common way to stop obsessions is to get a small implant that reduces fixation on whatever the thing is. This one, however, sometimes short-circuits, and totally blocks your character’s ability to care about anything at all, putting them into a deeply depressive state. The player may decide when the character falls into depression and when they extricate themselves from it. If the player never lets their character lapse into this state, the GM should take the initiative. Falsified Necessary Addiction Short Circuit Value: 1 Implant Point Max Times Taken: 1 Description: This character cannot go more than one day without drinking. gambling, etc.. i.e.. Satisfying their addiction due to some implant malfunction. Failure to do so results in lowered metabolic rates, thereby penalizing the character’s skill rolls by -1 MFD. After one week, the character has defeated their addiction. If they ever partake of that activity again, they have a 25% chance of becoming fully addicted again. Overcharged Pain Inhibitor Value: 4 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: Your character, thanks to something blocking the full function of their nerves, can barely feel pain. They act more reckless than most others, often for reasons that aren’t necessarily the brightest. This isn’t really a good thing for them in the long run, as you might expect. When injured, the lack of care with which they treat their wounds leads them to be much more difficult to heal. All methods that restore HP only restore half as many, and when resting to recover from wounds they recover at half the normal rate. Mis-Aligned Vocal Chord Enhancment Value: 3 Implant Points Max Times Taken: 1 Description: There are a lot of implants that someone might want to get to change how their voice works and sounds, and apparently, your character was one of them. The only problem is, when this implant was installed, the connections between it and their brain deteriorated very quickly, and now they have lost control over their vocal chords completely, barring them from making sounds beyond whispering. Many in this situation give up talking entirely until they can get it fixed, but it's up to the individual.